Now this is funny


On Fridays, the Trail-Gazette now provides a stack of free newspapers to the Estes Valley Library and Estes Park Town Hall (and potentially distributes free newspapers to other locations like the Visitors Center or Visit Estes Park, those are just the two places I know of).

There is some confusion about this, because Miguel Hermeneutica Romero wrote two editorials last month that seemed to imply just the second section of the broadsheet-format newspaper would be distributed free each Friday (to replace the free Friday tabloid-format "Inside and Out").  I'm having a bit of trouble finding the second section of the Friday newspaper as a free-standing publication (the old-style "Inside and Out"s were formerly available at the library as first-floor and second-floor piles, for example, but as noted, currently the entire paper is available free on both floors, and marked with a banner above the front-page fold that includes the word "Free"), but I don't tend to hang around local newspaper vending machines where "Inside and Out"s used to be stocked, so it may be the replacement freebie now occupies those sites.  (As one other aside, the vending machine on Moraine Avenue directly outside Trail-Gazette headquarters has been broken/defective the last two times I checked.  Newspapers could be removed freely without depositing any change.  You could just pull on the handle, not even roughly, and the gate would open.)

To return to the amusing part, this morning I was standing in the Safeway near the newspapers, leafing through the Estes Park News (save a tree), and two different individuals (both elderly) on their way out with their groceries stopped near the news racks and helped themselves to both the free Estes Park News and the not-free (according to the banner) Estes Park Trail-Gazette, in one instance multiple copies of both.  Didn't pay, didn't even pretend to look around as if they were going to or should pay, just stocked up and walked out.

Either these oldsters are shoplifting, or Miguel's message didn't come across as clearly as he had hoped.  Or maybe the Trail-Gazette is now free on Fridays.  To everyone.  At a five-finger discount.  Or not.  I would imagine Safeway is on the hook for some percentage of the cost of these papers (if they are indeed still 75 cents, as the rack seems to indicate), so I actually feel a bit bad for Safeway, although it's a nice philanthropic gesture to make up for all the Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts constantly accosting citizens on their way in and out of the store, and the police auxiliary currently shaking down shoppers at the registers.

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